In 1910, an assistant professor from Tokyo University named Fukurai Tomokichi conducted a well-known research regarding ESP. His first subject was Mifune Chizuko who read messages written inside hidden envelopes. Mifune, however, was viewed as fraudulent. Later that year, Tomokichi found Nagao Ikuko who was said to have nensha. As an experiment, Nagao was to “burn” an image onto a dry plate sealed inside an airtight X-ray proof metal box. Like Mifune, Nagao was seen as a charlatan. Depressed, Nagao developed a fever and succumbed to it. As for Mifune, she committed suicide in 1911.

I noticed there was something vaguely familiar with the story. I later realized that it was narrated in the fifth episode of Mouryou no Hako. At first I thought the narration was merely to provide a backstory for Enokizu Reijiro, the self-proclaimed psychic, but it was interesting to discover that it was based on an actual event.

The anime mentioned that despite the negative reputation he has earned, the professor was undeterred with his research. The anime didn’t mention though that in 1913, Fukurai met Takahashi Sadako who was said to have developed nesha through mental exercise. Sadako was able to convince several skeptics in her favor.

Now I am sure the name Sadako brings up an image of a woman crawling out of a well or a television screen. Oddly enough, Shizuko, the mother of the Ring cycle’s Yamamura Sadako, is based on Takahashi Sadako. Shizuko was a psychic. In a public demonstration of her abilities, Shizuko was mocked and accused as a fake. Defending her mother, Sadako, also a pyschic, attacked and killed a reporter. Sadako was eventually sealed under a well but survived through sheer will. When a resort was built on top of the well, Sadako, through nensha projected her spite into a blank videotape which, when watched would kill the viewer after seven days.

It seems Sadako, through nensha, has also “burned” her image into the Japanese pysche and to the rest of the world as well.

Going back to Mouryou no Hako, it has been a year since it came out and I recall writing a Mouryou no Hako post around this time of the year. It has been a year indeed but why, oh why, does the final episode remain unsubbed?

No related posts.

Earlier this week, GeoCities became officially unavailable, a few months since YaHoo! announced its closure. GeoCities began in the mid 1990’s providing free web hosting and later on, paid premium service. GeoCities was initially organized into “cities” or neighborhoods, such as Tokyo for anime and other Asian topics, or SiliconValley for tech topics. When Yahoo! acquired GeoCities in 1999, they switched from the neighborhood based URLs to a customized ones.

I first learned of GeoCities in high school, around a couple of years after the city was introduced to the World Wide Web. I was fascinated with Yu Yu Hakusho then and I would research about the anime in the Net. Information regarding Yu Yu Hakusho, however, was limited and so I thought of creating my own YYH website. After deliberating which web host to use, I settled for GeoCities. I learned HTML and came up with a crude lay-out filled with marquees and Java applets (they were all the rage then). I couldn’t exactly remember that site’s URL but I think it was www.geocities.com/yyh_profiles.

In college, I collaborated with two my my classmates to create another anime site: www.geocities.com/anime_list. Our site contained categorizations of anime characters such as those with cool hair, or those with cool weapons, etc. Later on, we put up fanarts and also wallpapers for download.

Also in college, I decided to create my own personal blog. I knew of the existence of blogging services such as LiveJournal and blogger but I opted to put up my blog in GeoCities because it offered greater control. My HTML skills have somehow improved and I learned CSS so I wanted to try coming up with my own design. However, since GeoCities had no blogging framework, I had to manually arrange my pages such that the latest post comes first. I also had to use HaloScan for the commenting and trackbacking system. My blog was at www.geocities.com/disruptive_camouflage.

Eventually, I grew tired of having to rearrange my pages each time I had a new post so I migrated my blog to WordPress. In fact, the oldest entries at my Wordpress blog came from my GeoCities blog. I still kept the GeoCities site and used it as a file server of sorts.

It’s been almost a decade since I’ve used GeoCities and now, the popular free web hosting site has gone to the far reaches of cyberspace oblivion. It is understandable though why YaHoo! closed GeoCities. With the rising popularity of blogging services and the arrival of social networking sites (which too provide blogging services), GeoCities has fallen out of fashion and its userbase has shrunk. And besides, it’s not making money for YaHoo!, as Rupert Goodwins, editor of ZDNet, said, “I think GeoCities was the first proof that you could have something really popular and still not make any money on the internet.”

The curtain has finally closed on GeoCities and some things will be missed forever. Well, goodbye Geocities! You have served me well.

This wasn’t really talked about much in the anime ’sphere, wasn’t it? I’m sure many of us were born before the ’90s era, basked in the HTML awefulness of Web 1.0, visited and/or created anime shrines at one point in our otakudom lives… right?

Geocities closed down, together with a good number of anime sites that shaped me as a fan. *Looks at all the Geocities sites in Anipike and sighs* With the exception of Hate Sites or Clubs, these sites were the epitome of remembering love for animes and mangas. Even until now I’d look back at those times and wonder just how I can make a shrine out of this blog. Or a museum, as ghostlightning once said.

There was this bishounen files site I was so fond of way back high school, with profiles of bishies from various series, classified into various types: the boy-next-door type (I remember Yuu from Marmalade Boy was one of them), the underdogs (Ryoga), the cross-dressers (Nuriko), the evil overlords (Zagato), etc etc. My memory’s a bit fuzzy but there’s a big chance that it was hosted in Geocities. I doubt I’ll ever be able to find that now, obviously.

Someone ought to rebuild that bishie bio database. Now it’s all about moe and GAR, seme and uke. Boy do I love digressing.

First encounter with HTML and Photoshop

I was never inspired to make my own site, lazy as I am, not until 1st year college when it was required by our professor. The year was 2002, back when Neopets was all the craze, and CometZone was still hip and trendy; back when I was still addicted to Ranma 1/2 (I remember using Ranma and Akane’s Ballad as my site BGM lol), YuYu Hakusho, Fushigi Yuugi, Rurouni Kenshin, and Card Captor Sakura. And still into fanart-ing.

I visited my homepage one last time before the D-Day, and a wave of nostalgia came over me as I was looking through my image gallery, most of which were scans of my fanarts and the Newtype magazine I had since 2nd year high school. A walk down memory lane here we go~

(Click on the thumbnails to view the larger image in an overlay window, won’t work through a feed reader)

Low and behold, my first scans, from my first Newtype magazine. Ever.

First impromptu color fanart (woke up in the middle of the night and thought, “I feel like making a fanart of my beloved Kurama-sama, so let’s do that”)

First raburabu fanarts <3

First CG attempt and FAIL

First CG semi-success; first fanart submitted and featured in a local manga-zine. Culture Crash, anyone? Microsoft will so sue me for using that Windows wallpaper for my background.

*cue Winter Sonata’s Memories BGM*

This one’s for you, Geocities:

But you put on quite a show, really had me going.
But now it’s time to go, curtain’s finally closing.
That was quite a show, very entertaining.
But it’s over now…
Go on and take a bow.

Or as SDS says, “Shine On, Geocities. Shine On… Forever”

It was my 2nd year in highschool and I was 16, constantly running away from Britney’s “Oops!… I Did It Again” in those eternal summers of youth. I managed somehow, rocking out to Neon-Genesis Evangelion’s intro by swapping multi-(floppy)-disk zip archives with my friends, and discovering this thing called Anime(lol!). It was either that or dial-up Hyperterminal, downloading it yourself from some random site in Anipike.com or trying your luck in Napster.

So we got techie, learning about the freedom in mp3’s and the internet boom helped us along, albeit slowly at 56kbps, until one day, instead of just visiting Anipike, we thought we’d try our luck with our own tribute/shrine/whatever. My sister was taking Computer Science at the time, and there were plenty of HTML resources online, plus Geocities(God bless his soul!) was offering free hosting with your yahoo mail, so we tried our hand in that.

Mine was called “the Grandstand” to commemorate the bleachers my friends and I usually hung out in. There, along with some game and personal stuff, I also built an anime corner. In hindsight, it was the anime corner that grew the most, housing a menial collection of Fushigi Yuugi pictures, random midi’s(Misato theme!) and large amounts of painstakingly coded HTML code. By code I meant secret links in length marquee’s, thorough use of the tag, and a small banner proclaiming “Proudly made in Notepad” to spite all those perky, oddly-colored, Frontpage users.

We expanded by joining the roster of sites included in Anime-rings’ random links. We also linked to each other–and always href-ed their site at every mention of their name–and signed guestbooks prolifically. All the while, religiously monitoring our daily visit site-counters. And then Google happened, and Blogger/Livejournal was born, and Anipike sorta fizzled out and we found out about going outside.

But I stop by ever-so-often. And though I have to jump through the Wayback Machine because geocities got tired of hosting me, the nostalgia and the indomitable optimism of those teenage years will always be online.

Share your Geocities story and we might just unleash a torrent of nostalgia right here

Further Reading

SDS’s eulogy posts for Geocities, where a number of people also shared their stories.

AstroNerdBoy reminded us to archive old GeoCities anime sites back when the news came about.

princetrunks also shared his Geocities tale, which explains the Web 1.0 look and feel of his site.

toonleap showed his geocities sites before, though unfortunately we can no longer access them. Except maybe through the Wayback Engine.

Reminiscing the Analog Otaku Life Days

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The Black Butler was all over Akiba, sorta.

It was a Saturday; our flight was not until 6pm, so we still had time to do One Last Shopping Trip in the morning and a bit in the afternoon. The whole trip would be in vain if we don’t get to Mandarake or Animate (or so that’s what I say, being the rabid fan that I am) at the very least, so I made it a point to go to at least one of them. After much deliberation (with myself), I decided to just visit Mandarake and spend the rest of my time and monies there, knowing well that this store alone could get me totally sucked in and probably never return to where I came from if possible. This store might not have the novelty items like Animate has, but it has mangas, artbooks, novels, games, OSTs, etc. sold at discounted price, even the new stuff. But I digress.

Our plan was to leave the hotel before 9:00am, so that we’d get to Akiba by 10:00am, but because of my sleepy-headedness, we weren’t able to leave till it was like… almost 10, because I only woke up at 9:00am!! =__=; So thanks to me, the one who’s supposedly most eager to go to Akiba and had a whole LOT of agenda there, we lost like an hour of shopping time, hurray~! \o/

Aside from that, we also had to leave our luggage in the station, since we can’t roam around Akiba with the tons of stuff we’re carrying with us to the airport (duh). We sought for the most cost-efficient way possible to fit all our luggage, so that entailed a couple more minutes, which means, more shopping time lost! orz. Not to mention we still had to find our way to Mandarake, since no one among my colleagues has ever gone there before.

Before heading to Mandarake, we decided to stop by Kotobukiya first, since one of my colleagues was looking for a seifuku, for whatever future cosplay plans she has, and that’s the shop my other colleague was fairly familiar with. I had no idea what was in store for me in Kotobukiya though, so my mind and body wasn’t prepared for the ‘horror’ awaited me — zomg plushies, mini figurines, kapibara and San-x stuff — irresistibly adorable items, the bane of my existence >_>;

The moment I set my eyes on the cute Code Geass zodiac mini figurines, uh-oh… point of no return. I was g-geassed *__*! I grabbed 6 of ‘em like some auto-response mechanism, failing to realize that they’re “holy crap 315 yen each!” (the normal gashapon toys are only 200 yen) I was planning to give them to some of my officemates and other friends, not really to Catch ‘Em All, so I was still sane… somehow, or just totally silly and/or generous. But the story doesn’t end there, sadly. Kotobukiya is evil, and knew well that I had a penchant for all things cute, and when I saw these Kapibara and San-x Relax Kuma stuff… I guess you can imagine what happened next. Kapibara magnet getto! Bag-transforming plushie Kuma getto! Tonari no Totoro magnet getto! Chii’s Sweet Home cellstrap getto! orz. There could’ve been more, had I not managed to restrain myself from grabbing other stuff in the shop. I can’t believe this segue shopping spree already cost me around 8,000 yen, UNPLANNED EXPENSES!

You think we headed right to our supposedly destination Mandarake? Well think again. As we were finding our way to the Mandarake Complex in Akiba, I can’t believe what I saw right around the corner… it’s an Animate!! Like a lover from your past that you’re supposed to have forgotten and set aside for ‘personal reasons’, it appeared… right then and there. Who am I to refuse?! I’m just a silly gaijin looking for animu stuff to splurge my money on, despite not being wealthy! And there, I became, yet again, a willing victim. First thing I did was to look for ToraDora keychains, but before I reached the floor where it was I stumbled upon the area where the ‘new stuff’ are, novelty items of Hetalia, Kuroshitsuji, etc etc. I almost bought this HUEG Hetalia desk mat, but I regained my sanity by taking my time, contemplating and ‘reflecting’, before finally heading to the cashier, whew. I ‘accidentally’ bought this one Kuroshitsuji mini figurine though, something I totally regret buying because it turned out to be a character I don’t even know and I doubt I’d like in the series (it’s another butler), and it cost me a painful 500+ yen, ouch.

Then I saw the cute Gundam00 wrist pads, and the Moyashimon mouse pad, Toshokan Sensou folder, Hetalia keychain, Nogizaka Haruka cellstrap, ToraDora keychain/pendant, ToraDora “foldable” bag, Nia and Yoko cellstrap, and the rest was history. We were running out of time so I no longer had time to contemplate on whatever I was grabbing/buying that time, and spent a whooping 12,000 yen

I was running out of both time and money and I still had to go to Mandarake! We got there alright, but I was given a time limit of less than an hour… :sob: I was supposed to look for the Legend of Galactic Heroes Handbook, which is out of print and is being sold on amazon for like 5x its original price since it’s pretty much a rare item now, but I never got to the shounen section where the light novels supposedly are. I ended up in the H-section — wrong floor! and I made my exit as soon as possible, ignoring all the boobs and tentacles and whatnot in the place *shudder*

One clear sign that I was in the “right place”

I got to the shoujo section, and luckily, got the Basara artbooks (it’s not Sengoku Basara but the epic shoujo manga Basara) I was looking for (segue pimping: if you’re still reading whatever sissy shoujo mangas (‘popular’ shoujo mangas like Special A and Shugo Chara can sod off really, despite being enjoyable in its own right), drop them first and read Basara instead. It’s a shoujo epic, in the total ‘epic’ sense. I fail so much I still can’t bring myself to write a proper post about this awesome series, but I guess you’ll fail more if you don’t get to appreciate it for what it’s worth. Then again, I don’t think the scanlation is done yet, 21 volumes or so? hmm). And for some reason, this one Gurren Lagann movie fanbook got mixed up with the shoujo stuff, and I immediately grabbed it without thinking twice. I haven’t finished watching Gurren Lagann, but I felt like buying it just because. Ever heard of buying stuff as a ‘future fan’ of the series or something? Like buying a Code Geass artbook even if you haven’t watched a single episode of it (as a ‘future fan’)? Yeah I’m doomed that way.

There wasn’t much shoujo mangas in the Akiba branch of Mandarake, the one in Fukuoka had even more stuff (with this result), but beggars can’t be choosers~ I ended up buying the Hetalia manga because I found the discount too good to resist. I was also looking for Potemayo vols 2+ but then they didn’t have it in stock heh. There were other titles I’m supposed to be looking for, light novels in particular, would’ve grabbed the first volume of Spice and Wolf, also Tokikake and Paprika if I saw it there, also the ARIA artbooks Seleria asked me to buy, but sigh… NOT ENOUGH TIME! And I can only blame myself for getting sucked into Kotobukiya and Animate before heading to Mandarake =__=; But no regrets!

One thing I realized in all this, is how my impulsive tendencies become worse when I’m under time pressure. I have the tendency to get really zealous over the silliest of things, like this uhm, Prince of Tennis umbrella I bought at Jump Shop Fukuoka during my first Japan business trip. I’m not sure how much time I need to discern whether the purchase would be a wise or stupid decision, and I guess it also depends on the circumstance, case-to-case basis. I mean, if I had both time and money in my hands like meronpan over here, I probably would’ve have hesitated to BUT MOAR LOOT. The only thing that would stop me would be the fear for excess baggage. Then again I guess meronpan’s loot all fall under the ‘planned expenses’ category, unlike mine orz. But sigh… I really have to control my impulsive tendencies =__=;;

How do you think you guys would have fared if you were in my situation? Would you have spent MOAR, or Less?

I guess there would be many factors that would come into play in this, not only time, but money, zeal in buying merchandise or what. But anyways, just share about your impulsive tendencies, so we can like form a support group or something, and so that I won’t feel as bad for my unplanned expenses

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I didn’t pass JLPT1, 39 points short, and it’s not just because of my big booboo — Writing/Vocabulary section was BAD – 53/100, Listening was even WORSE – 40/100, Reading/Grammar was ok – 148/200 — BUT that’s not any reason to feel sad or anything. No way can this put my spirits down! Or something. In fact, I’m even brimming with optimism, knowing that my light novel reading (no matter how little) and grammar self-study efforts actually paid off! Need to focus on enhancing Listening skills, though, BADLY.

In light of this, I decided to make some sort of JLPT1 Post-Mortem Analysis, just so I can pinpoint what went wrong, regrets that I plan to remedy as I get myself ready to take JLPT1 again this year. And of course, this is no one else but for myself, I’m just taking advantage of my POWERS in the blog to post something as self-indulgent as this, heh.

The Good — to Continue

Novel reading

It all started with Kaze no Stigma, then came Saiunkoku, albeit cut short briefly as I lost the motivation to continue reading and I have no one else to blame but myself. Then there’s Kure-nai, the first volume of which I’ve read, and reread once in a while, when I feel like updating one post I have in queue for who knows how long now. Then there’s also Toshokan Sensou, only ‘finished’ volume 1, skipping a lot of stuff in this one, with the jargons I don’t know, so I doubt that helped me improve .___.;

Grammar self-study

We didn’t have class for JLPT1 in the office last year (since there’s like only 3 students — me and two of our managers in the office), so I decided to review on my own. I studied this Unicom book for the JLPT1 grammar, almost every day way back June, inside the train. The usage examples in the book helped a lot, so I was able to retain them in my memory despite not encountering the JLPT1 grammar patterns in stuff I read or watch and slacking off every now and then (hah!). Of course not 100% mastery, but enough to get a high(er) score in the Grammar section!

The Not so Good — To Remedy

Forced Kanji Memorization

Instead of acquiring kanjis and vocabs from reading and stuff I expose myself to (like the way it was for the past years, acquired from reading/translating mangas, playing games, etc), I decided to go through the 1000 common newspaper kanji compounds list, which, after hours of memorizing and writing, didn’t really stick to my mind as much as I wanted. And like what, only 3 of the compounds I learned actually came out in the exam! Not sure how many times I should encounter a kanji before it sticks to my head, but I find the best way to go about memorizing is still… by association, which is why kanjis/vocabs found in titles are so much easier to remember. Oh, and not having known about Tools to aid in memorization beforehand was a total downer.

The Late Listening Study

I started brushing up on my Listening a tad bit too late, like only 2 months before the exam, with the usual slacking off from studying and/or sleeping inside the train when I’m supposed to be answering the exercises in this Listening Studying workbook I borrowed from our office library. Then, after I bid goodbye to making episodic summaries in the blog, I found myself being reliant to fansubs more and more, which made me get better in Reading English Text instead of Listening to the Japanese Audio orz. One of these days I’m gonna force myself to watch stuff in raw again, or better yet, watch Chinese subs. Listen to audio, and learn kanjis at the same time. Would be so much better if there’s Japanese subtitles, but alas, I have no idea where to find that.

Plan of Action

Translate MOAR

I fell behind in translating after I passed JLPT3 and got busy with work. To think that I haven’t even translated all that much, I didn’t even finish the Maimiko Touko no Jikenbo one-volume manga I was working on some years ago T__T FFAILLL. I got lazy and complacent, became contented with being able to understand the gist of what I read, which made me learn less vocabs/kanjis (since I’d have to stop reading and search for the meaning of the kanjis I don’t know if I were to do it the ‘hardcore super geek way’). Basically, it made me less of an “active reader”, since I wasn’t ‘forced’ to understand every bit of what’s being said, something like that.

I should get my lazy ass to translate again, work for scanlation groups like before perhaps? Or even venture into translating light novels. Just have to find a way to balance this with blogging, among other things.

Note to self: Grow out of translating fluff, and work on more serious stuff. Minako Narita works will do, perhaps. Toshokan Sensou is something far behind my league atm, can probably start with something more slice-of-lifey than militar-y. Or better yet, translate the Kaze no Stigma novel, especially the Ignition short stories Nothing is certain yet at this point, but we’ll see. Or better yet, be an active translator in the scanlation groups I’m supposed to be part of! >_<;

Read MOAR Novels

This year, I only read the 1st volume of Kure-nai, the 1st volume of Toshokan Sensou, and also a bit of Nogizaka Haruka (lol). I think I either have to convince myself to go translate or bring back the Deep Frying feature in the blog to force myself to READ MOAR, and also understand almost every bit of what I read, not skip stuff like I do now. For JLPT1, there’s no other way but the HARDCORE WAY.

Listen to MOAR Drama CDs, Watch MOAR stuff RAW

I used to listen to Drama CDs, because zOMG they breathe life to the shoujo mangas I LURV (mangas that haven’t been adapted into an anime yet)! But I slacked off, like usual. After getting hooked on anime instead of mangas and games, I found myself being less hardcore about Drama CDs. In fact, I hardly ever listen to one anymore. Also because anime fansub is evilllllll, evil for people who are prone to resorting to the ‘easier way out’ of things. Why rely on raw/Chinese subs when there are English subs! Why bother listening to Drama CDs when you already have the anime?! This might entail listening to dialogues twice, thrice, or even more, just to get what’s being said in the Drama CDs and/or the anime, but if it’ll help enhance my sucky listening skills, then it’ll be more than worth it.

Watch MOAR JDramas

Watching JDramas ought to be the better way of enhancing Listening skillz for JLPT, because it’s close to what people really say in real life, unlike animes that is. But I’ve never been into JDramas, well I just watch one or two from time to time, but I usually fail to watch it till the end =/ I ought to find one or two JDramas I have to follow from start to end one of these days… and again, force myself to watch raw/csubbed. Or perhaps I can learn even with English subs, just have to pay extra

Play MOAR Games

I used to be a hardcore player of otome games, not the I WANT TO PLAY THEM ALL kind of hardcore (just to some extent), but the kind of geek who stops at almost every bit of dialogue, take down notes of unknown kanjis, trying to decipher what the heck the characters are saying. Heck, I wonder how long I played Corda before I really understood what the characters were saying. It’s hard, and quite a pain in the ass, but no pain no gain, right? Success gained by hard work is much more fulfilling after all.

Attend Class

Not sure if our company is going to hold a class for JLPT1 since there would be only be 3 possible students, but I really hope I can attend one this year. Even the class for JLPT2 will do. It’s more fun studying in a group, you can learn stuff by mentoring too! So yeah, hope we’ll also talk in Nihongo this time around, our previous sensei was fluent in English so there wasn’t much of a need to speak Nihongo =__=; so my Nihongo communication skillz get rustier and rustier as the days go by. Sigh.

And that’s it! Hope I can really get the motivation to study… SOON. To JLPT1 and beyond!

Credits to まきの, かみや, and ミサキ for the pics.

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“is becoming good at Nihongo”, says one of the contestants in the recently concluded Nihongo Speech Contest – Open Division category during the Q&A portion, whose speech was entitled “Welcome to the Otaku World”. No offense, but I found this answer to be a sellout, since well, the reason why someone could be part of the Nihongo Speech Contest finalists and could have a greater chance of winning is because he/she is good at Nihongo, amirite?! Ok, enough sarcasm, and the contestant I’m stabbing behind her back even won 1st place so who am I to argue.

While I know that this is indeed one of the benefits of, well not really being an otaku per se, but being interested in Japanese culture in general, I won’t consider this to be the “best” thing about it. Yes, some people become hardcore in studying Nihongo and pass JLPT because of this *ahem*, but you know the best thing about being into this whole fandom for me, far more than having l33t Nihongo skillz? …It keeps me a kid at heart — someone who can still enjoy watching 2D stuff, laugh at jokes, enjoy watching retarded shows, be passionate about something, no matter how ridiculous they might seem to others. It adds spice to what could’ve been a dull and uninspired life, COOL AND SPICY!

If you’re wondering what the speech was about, well the otagirl contestant told the world how fun it is to be an otaku. She discussed about the 3Cs in the “otaku world” — collection, creativity, and community (more like the “otaku marketing model” used by producers for milking wealthy otakus) — and talked about her Gunpla and gashapon toy collection (among other collection she has stored on her treasure trove shelves) lol. She basically had this “I R PROUD TO BE AN OTAKU/FANGIRL” stamped on her forehead, and it was fun seeing her all excited as she went about narrating her otaku story. She also mentioned about how otakus are stereotyped to be weird and whatnot by people, though she didn’t delve into this so much anymore.

Now back to the question, what do you think is the best thing about being an otaku, or being an anime/manga/game fan (to those who don’t like being called one)? Don’t tell me it’s “being good at Nihongo”, unless you want me to smack you or call you “BOO! WEEABOO!” >:[ Well I guess it’s understandable if the super MOEE~ Kona pic fries your brain or something

Credits to はひふへ for the super moeee Kona pic :3

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Last last Friday was the memorable ‘Tokyo Tower Day’ for me and my officemates. We spent much of our free time after work in the Main observatory (we no longer went to the top floor because we had to pay extra bucks, and it won’t really be worth it unless we had more time in our hands), together with our lucky birthday-celebrant ex-officemate who’s staying in Japan for her post-graduate studies. She’s one lucky dawg because she gets a free pass and a free cake c/o Tokyo Tower, so yay! Anyways, so there we were, five young ladies, kids at heart, decided to go silly and do things people don’t normally do in there.

I like how this ended up, with the reflection and all

First, we took vain shots in the elevator. Boy was it hard, hard to fit all our faces into the frame, lol. It would’ve taken a few more trials to get it right, but the elevator was too darn fast for that.

lovely night lights~

We got off the elevator, parted ways for a little while, took pictures of the night view on our own, before finally being reunited in our silliness…

…like breathing onto the glasses so we can write our names on the hazy fog that gets formed on the windows after. We occupied like one glass window each, wrote our names on it and took pictures of it as some sort of ‘souvenir’. It turned out pretty embarrassing when this one guy (the caretaker?) wiped the hazy mess we left, lol. The windows weren’t really good for viewing after what we did, obviously

And it’s because it was nighttime, we thought why not take advantage of this and take silhouette pics! So yeah, YMCA FTW!

Then, we went to the 2nd floor of the Main Observatory, where our birthday celebrant friend claimed her free cake.

We took a look around the place, and spent much of our time taking pictures by the look-down. It was amusing to see people going “kowaiii!”, or “kimochi waruiii”, or “scary mann” XDD Ok, I have to stop making fun of random people lol.

Crazy as we are, we thought of doing the same ‘stunt’ we did in the glass windows to the look-down glass, but unfortunately(?), our “foggy jutsu” proved to be useless against the super thick glass. Instead, we just decided to go ‘volt in!’ and take random snapshots by the look-down, pictures of our feet and hands.

Before we knew it, it was already 10 o’clock in the evening, Tokyo Tower closing time. Now if you think the silliness fun is gonna stop there, well think again. While there are things you can only do inside Tokyo Tower, there are also things you can only do outside.

I can’t remember exactly why or how this happened, but we ended up posing like refugees

Then, we decided to tinker with the light sign, or more like bastardize it, so what was once “Tokyo Tower” became “Toyo Tower”, literally translated (in our Tagalog language) as “Soy Sauce Tower”. It becomes even punnier once you know that we also use “toyo” to refer to “have a screw loose/crazy/insane/etc” (“may toyo [ako]”). So yeah, it’s like this “Toyo Tower” thing happened because may toyo [kami] (kami = we)

We finally went home after that. I experienced my very first crammed up train ride, and realized that there’s no way the train rides in Tokyo will ever compare to the helluva commute ride I go through everyday in the Philippines, with the ogres and all. It’s actually worse, and also better, considering how drunk persons are not allowed in our trains, and there’d usually be a gentleman willing to give up his seat for a lovely girl like me.

I fail for not bringing home any souvenirs though, except the pictures me and my officemates took. It sure was worth it nonetheless

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It’s been a few days since I went to Tokyo for a very short business trip (I’m already back!), and the very first thing my officemates and I did after checking in our hotel: Find a place with lotsa gashapons, because I’ll totally FAIL AT LIFE if I never get to buy even one of ‘em throughout my stay here. I wasn’t sure if we’ll have time to go out and buy stuff on the weekdays after work so we made the most out of our free time. Luckily enough, there was a Yodobashi near our place, which had zomg soo many gashapons! It’s the most gashapons I’ve seen in all my life, though I know very well that other Yodobashi stores has TONS MORE, like the one in Akihabara which I failed to visit because of lack of time (caused by my ’sleeping beauty’ blues), something I’m both regretful and thankful for.

Given the once-in-a-blue moon “opportunity” for me to let lose my gashapon obsession, I think it’s but obvious what happened next. Gashapon splurging, full throttle!!! Think Nogizaka Haruka, with less moe and rabu rabu factor. It was not until I spent a few thousand yens that I realized how much I’ve been spending orz. I was sane enough to avoid spending 400 yen on the Marimite gashapon, though insane enough to spend a total of 4000 yen on gashapon stuff alone. I’m gonna give the other ones as prezzies for other people, and I was happy with how the whole experience turned out to be, so no regrets!

I did get the whole Triangle in Macross Frontier, after all Boy did my eyes gleam at the sight of that gashapon machine. The first one I got was a VF-25S, followed by another VF-25S, the ‘gun metallic’ version, then after that came my lucky streak — Sheryl, Altohime, and finally… Ranka! I’m supposed to be giving some of these as omiyage, but I feel like being selfish and want to keep the threesome all to myself TT__TT

Anyways, moving on to the next gashapon… Shugo Chara chara-nari mini figurine! *__* Too bad it was already running out of stock by the time I found it, I only got Ikuto and Tadase (in chara-nari forms), drats! I’m definitely collecting ALL of them Shugo Chara-nari capsule toys, and I might have to resort to the less exciting but hassle-free and wiser way… by ordering the toys online, which gives me the assurance that I will really get what I want >_>;

I was also pleasantly surprised to see Moyashimon goodies, grabbed two big microbe cellstraps, and would’ve gotten more if it was cheaper. It’s 300 yen, most gashapon toys are 200, pretty reasonable price given its size.

I accidentally got a Lucky Star gashapon toy because of some booboo though, cost me 300 yen. I got a Tsukasa in miko outfit lol. I was supposed to be getting the Kapibara-tan (capybara) toy underneath it, and happened to insert the coin in the wrong machine I’ve been moe over Kapibara toys ever since I saw its toys in Fukuoka last 2007.

Out of sheer randomness, I grabbed one cellstrap of this “12 Nin no Yasashii Koroshiya” game (whose office Engrish title goes “Twelve Tender Killers in a Mixed-up World” — made me chuckle lol), just because it had gorgeous guys with You Higuri’s gorgeous artwork. I got one DMC cellstrap too, despite how I still don’t have the right to say “GO TO DMC!!!” at the moment. And, I also got two School Rumble toys, despite not being a big fan of the manga/anime (I only caught a glimpse of the first few episodes).

That’s one major splurging problem I have, you see. I don’t have to be a major fan of a series to want to buy their stuff. Oftentimes I rely on some sort of ‘I’ll be a fan of this series sooner or later’ premonition, and buy stuff in advance. When I went to Fukuoka last 2007 I grabbed Aria and Nodame Cantabile gashapon stuff, despite having watched only the first series of the former (and sleeping on it a few times too), and despite not having watched the latter. I got 2 maa-kun, 2 himeya and 1 Aria-shachou cellstrap back then (all for the sake of getting Aria-shachou), but only kept Aria-shachou with me. When I finally get to rewatch the series I’d probably regret giving the other shachous to my officemates, who don’t even know who they are and what value they have in the first place! So yeah, I think I’m really going to refrain from giving random gashapons to people who don’t know who the heck the characters are, not without a “watch the anime where this came from” pimping, at least

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I already talked about the loot I bought during my trip, so I won’t talk about that cliché topic anymore. Instead, I’ll show you some of the foods I fell in love with during my 3-week business trip.

Presenting, the Habanero ring chips~! I mentioned a bit about this in my Natsu no Sora episode 4 post, but it was really random lol. Anyways, this is one of the spiciest chips out there in the world, made from the spiciest chili pepper Habanero. Eating just a few of these chips is enough to give your mouth and tummy a burning sensation, as though your stomach is being pierced to its very core. That said, this is obviously for hardcore spice fans so don’t blame me if you get a hemorrhage from eating it!, and thus I am the only one who know about it in our little office. Well I still hope my beloved officemates in Japan can bring me home some of these… I miss them so much

I’ve only been to a few places in Fukuoka, but I’ve got to say, Hamakatsu tonkatsu is a MUST TRY! This is the first restaurant I visited during my trip, recommended by our boss. The meal sets they have are a little pricey, but I consider it to be really affordable given their service and the eat-all-you-can goodies that are part of the meal set. Tonkatsu is their specialty, and they have this special sauce which you’d have to add with grinded sesame seeds (you have to perform this ‘ritual’ of grinding, it seems), and voila! Yummy tonkatsu~ I’ve been telling my kouhais about this, but it seems that this isn’t easily accessible from where they are in Tokyo, so they have yet to taste this. Seriously, the pics of the foods here not only LOOK delicious, it also tastes delicious, reallyyy.

My memory’s a little vague but I do remember this restaurant being located in Hawk’s Town Mall. As written in that little sign (if you can see it in the pic), they offer meal sets which comes with eat-all-you-can bread (hurray!!), and both the meal itself and the breads were really yummy~ I loved the croissants (kurowa-san ) the most. But sigh, I fail for not taking a pic of the actual meal I had that time

And last but not the least, is this not-so-scrumptious looking pic of another 食べ放題[tabehoudai] (eat all you can) feast I had back there. Eat all you can shabu shabu!!! This is somewhere in Chuo, Fukuoka, but gah, my memory fails me right now… what I know is that we walked a few blocks from where we ate Ichiran Ramen to here (ugh yes, food after food… pigging out ^^; ).

I’d love to say something about Ichiran Ramen, one of the best ramens in Japan, but alas, all I have is this not-so-fresh-looking pic of it (half-eaten) lol. That’d be quite eww of course, so never mind And, I don’t know if it’s a standard in other ramen houses or especially for Ichiran, but I found it nifty that you can customize your ramen there, the spice level (I chose ‘double’ :3), the size of the noodles, amount of fat, etc. Sigh, Ichiran… TT____TT

I could also talk about the yummy Kitkat maccha and strawberry chocolate wafers I ate there, as well as other chocolate goodies and other chips, but bah, I’ll just leave this up here If I get to taste them again, I’ll see to it that I’ll post about them.

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We finally reached a million pageviews last week!! Hurray! And we also made it to 9rules! Hurray2!! A big thanks to Kabitzin for the 9rules heads up, as always! We were rejected the first time, and instead of actually asking why we weren’t accepted, I moped… and thankfully enough, got enlightened and inspired to upgrade the blog + theme, organize the categories, and make this inspirational post.

Being accepted to 9rules is like a pat in the back, more than anything else, like a sempai who tells you, “Good job!” (I haven’t finished Gurren Lagann, but I do believe that Kamina x Simon moment best depicts this). There’s so much to celebrate and to be thankful for, in all these 17 months of blogging. And you, dear readers and commentators, especially those who became my 心の友 (kokoro no tomo => bossom friends), are all part of this. To add a certain twist to this thank you post, I decided to do make it more tl;dr and share this little eureka! moment as I discover the etymology of ‘arigatou‘.

Way back when I first encountered the kanji equivalent of ありがとう [arigatou], I was both amused and befuddled at its sheer oddness and irony. Yes, there is a kanji for ありがとう, but it’s rarely used. It’s commonly used in the otome games I played, however. The kanji goes: 有(り)難う (it can do without the り, hence the ‘()’), which, to my n00b eyes back then, translated to something like ‘…presence [有り => 有ります => arimasu] of hardships [難 => nan => difficulty]‘. And I was like, “being thankful for having hardship?! o.O” It didn’t make sense at all, and I never bothered researching about it too. I ended up thinking that this kanji must have been an 当て字 [ateji], kanjis representing native and borrowed words — aka, more kanji pain in the butt for Japanese and gaijin people alike.

One example of this would be the borrowed word クラブ [kurabu => club], which was turned into something authentically Japanese-y: 倶楽部 (also read as ‘kurabu’, with the kanjis representing ‘together’, ‘fun’, and ‘place / club’). In this case, the ateji makes sense because it matches both phonetic and semantic values, but there are also times when it won’t make sense at all. Like the ateji for すし[sushi], 寿司, which, by semantics, would mean ‘life span => 寿(命)’ and ‘command 司(令)’.

Now in the Japanese beginner’s class I attended in college (which was already during my last year), I remained curious about this weird 有難う kanji and so I asked our professor about it. My memory is pretty vague but I recall him actually agreeing that it is an ateji and hence it reinforced my little hypothesis. And then, just this week, while I was studying for JLPT1 using the UNICOM grammar book, I came across this ’special extra note’ for one of the grammar patterns, and it read: “The etymology of 有難う [arigatou]” I was fascinated beyond words, especially after finding out that my hypothesis for yearsss was all wrong (I felt a little disappointed at my Japanese professor too, just a little~).

The etymology of 有難う goes wayy deeper than just being the nonsensical ateji that I used to think. Not to mention the kanji has long been part of the word, not just assigned to it after xx years of conception, as with the case of atejis. And, it actually makes perfect sense.

Apparently, this all came from this one little phrase: 「有る（ある）こと」が「難い（かたい）」 => [aru koto] ga [katai] => ’something that’s difficult to come by’ or ’something that doesn’t happen all too often (in this world)’, either an act of kindness or any form of blessing [1]. It’s a blessing that’s difficult to come by, which makes you all the more thankful for it. Hence, it’s 有難く [arigataku] => which just later transforms into arigatou. Got it? I sure hope you did.

Whew… that was a mouthful.

Something to make this post all the more beautifully Nia-filled

This blogging endeavor brought me many of those really special blessings, more than just improving my English (lolz), how I communicate and express my thoughts and opinions, and organize my usually jumbled-up thoughts… it made me part of this whole anime blogosphere, and brought me closer to a diverse group of people who share the same interests as I do (or otherwise ), far more than I ever imagined. And for that, from the bottom of my heart, ありがとう！！！

Notes:

[1] Sorry if I’m confusing the heck out of people with this explanation. Kanjis are really complicated you see, and so the ‘難’ I read as ‘nan’ earlier, has tons of other reading, one of which is ‘kata(i)’, which, when suffixed to ari, becomes ‘gatai’ instead.

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From what I gather, イケメン is derived from the root words いけてる(iketeru), which roughly translates to “hawt”, or “cool” (yeah, what a strange irony), an alternative for the more familiar term kakkoi, and めん(面), meaning “face” or looks. Whether this ‘men’ comes from the literal English word “men” would also be a point of contention, but in the end it still retains the essence of this lingo. Now put these two together and you get, イケメン, which refers to “hawt guys”.

Let’s cut the lingo crap and get to the point of this post. A few days ago I ordered two magazines from HMV. They’re ROOKIES and イケメン-filled magazines +___+ They were delivered to my office so my officemates and I shared the joy of drooling staring at the Japanese hotties in the said magz. I had some free time today so I scanned pics from the Koi-Men ‘08 Spring magazine, filled with photo gravures of the bishies of Spring! I loved the other magazine I got as well, +act mini vol.01, a must-have for ROOKIES fans. It’s like a ROOKIES fanbook of some sort, filled with pictures and interview of the main cast. The photos in this magazine weren’t as good as the first magazine I got, so I didn’t bother scanning them anymore.

Scans overload down below, for the fangurls (and fanboys?) out there who want to share my joy! If RL bishies scare you away, or you’re someone who couldn’t care any less about these guys, feel free to skip my random raves and go straight to my ROOKIES pimping.

Yusuke Yamamoto

Taiki~~ <3 The first time I saw Yusuke Yamamoto casted as Taiki for the HanaKimi jdrama, I was turned off by his pouty lips lol. That's all thanks to the not-so-good Hanakimi picture I saw back then, because after the JDrama aired, I've come to love this guy. Oh and he's also in Gokusen 3, btw.

Hiro Mizushima

Minami Nanba of the Hanakimi JDrama, and Soshi of Zettai Kareshi. A certified IKEMEN~ And I’m glad he’s finally becoming less skinny than he was in Hanakimi

Haruma Miura

I didn’t know who this guy was until I got this magazine. He’s part of the Gokusen 3 cast, as well as the Koizora and Akihabara@DEEP movie.

Yuu Shirota

OMGZ Yuu Shirota makes me faint. He’s the hawtest guy in HanaKimi and ROOKIES, and one of the shallow reasons why I decided to watch these two JDramas. Too bad he didn’t have much of a screentime and HanaKimi, and ugh… they made him gay too. I’m just glad ROOKIES made up for that, made him more GAR than ever.

Yuichi Nakamura

It’s a TRAP!! This trap coincidentally has the same name as one of my favorite seiyuus, and their biggest difference is well, the trappyness factor ^^;

ROOKIES

I’m biased for these guys, so their pics are the only ones I scanned lol

…last but not the least, the guys of the awesome JDrama ROOKIES. If you’re not watching this JDrama, go do so, NOW! I have long been thinking about evangelizing about this show like Os and Blissmo, but that didn’t quite happen. So now I’m taking this chance to preach about the PURE AWESOMENESS of ROOKIES. As Os aptly describes, this is a a GTO x baseball kind of jdrama, except that it has a lot more SOUL than GTO. Never have I seen a drama with this much SOUL. It’s baseball with so much GAR and HEART. The best sports drama I’ve seen so far.

Kawato, the teacher / coach in this JDrama, reminds me so much of Kamina from TTGL, from the way he gives his inspiring GAR talk about not giving up on dreams, and how he puts so much faith in his students despite how notorious bad guys they are. In just about every episode, he gives out a Kamina-esque speech ala “Believe in me who believes in you!”, and he certainly lives by his word. Prepare to be moved with each episode of ROOKIES, down to the deepest depths of your being. Every episode of this never fails to give me goosebumps of excitement and move me to tears. GAR manly friendships and bonds between men FTW!!

It’s amazing how they brought this manga to life. Simply amazing! I’m out of words, so I’ll just say it one more time. GO WATCH ROOKIES!!

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